A Oregon home offered for $49/night at AirBnB

If you are planning winter travel, let me say that no time is better than now given that travel is down many fold and lots of deals abound. But if one is not careful travel can quickly become an expensive hobby. Since vacation rentals are one of the most expensive piece of the travel budget, I have developed some strategies to keep the costs low.

As a youth I travelled to Europe and Asia extensively through Youth Hostels. But as I grew older traveling through Youth Hostels seemed a bit strange. While I very much enjoy the company of young travelers, and particularly like the camaraderie of the fellow traveler, being an older person in the company of teenagers and twenty something seemed a bit out of place. Plus Youth Hostels tend to be rather spartan and while the spartan nature of travel was the main attraction in my youth, today the lack of comfort is not so appealing.

Then there is the Elderhostel – recently renamed to Exploritas. The focus of Exploritas is “organized travel” with the intent of providing some education. Exploritas, as any organized travel would, offers some excellent travel opportunities in the company of likeminded people, but truth be told, its not my <a href=”http://www.jayateas.com”>cup of tea</a>. I find the “organized” nature of travel rather stifling even though the opportunity to get to know a few people over two-three weeks has its own merits.

Since my preference is to travel light with as much flexibility as possible, recently I have been traveling a lot more through bed and breakfasts and by taking advantage of friends of friends of friends who might be living in the town I am planning to visit. In addition, I have been using Craigs list a lot. For instance, the previous link will provide you with a link of vacation rentals available in NY area.

But recently I stumbled upon another neat website called AirBnB, which while I haven’t tried out, from just browsing and reading comments of previous users of specific rentals it appears that this will be a new way for me to locate short term rentals in near future. Mind you, many of the offerings tend to be rather expensive, but if you are traveling to a large city it is not unusual to find some local artist or a student offering a clean room for $50 or less! The big benefit of this sort of travel for me is that I now get a local expert to help me plan the exploration of the city, my food expense is cut in half as I can use the kitchen, and I end up making new friends – often for life.

So, as you can see travel does not have to be very expensive. If you look around, vacation rentals can be found for cheap in many locations. Its just a matter of doing some research.

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